Nicaragua battles COVID-19 and a Disinformation Campaign
Every country in the world is trying to balance its fight against the virus with the need to have a functioning economy, and there is plenty of debate about what the balance should be. The world’s poorer countries face the toughest challenge, because a high proportion of their populations engage in a daily struggle to […]
COVID-19 as a pretext for repression
“He’s not a doctor, I don’t think.” Trump had just finished a phone call with Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), the de facto president of Honduras who runs a narco-state. On April 30, JOH was indirectly implicated in drug and murder charges by the US Justice Department in a case against a former chief police officer. This […]
‘Love in the time of COVID-19’ – a cynical analysis of Nicaragua’s efforts to combat the epidemic
Nicaragua’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the subject of correspondence in the medical journal, The Lancet. A letter from 13 health professionals, based in the USA (except for one in Costa Rica), criticised the Nicaraguan government’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic as ‘careless’ and ‘perhaps the most erratic of any country in the world […]
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”
The right-wing opposition in Nicaragua, having failed in their attempted coup in 2018, still looks at any potential crisis as a new opportunity to attack the Sandinista government. Their latest chance, of course, arrived with the coronavirus pandemic. Even though the virus has barely hit the country yet, the government is under attack. The international […]
As the coronavirus strikes, Nicaraguans in Costa Rica are urged to stay
The coronavirus epidemic is still in its early stages in Central America but it has already put a focus on Costa Rica’s dependency on workers from Nicaragua. At any one time there are around 400,000 Nicaraguans working in the neighbouring country, especially doing building work, domestic work, as security guards or in agriculture. Given that […]
A headline you won’t read
Here’s a headline you won’t see: Nicaragua is at peace. After the violent attempt to overthrow the government in 2018, which cost at least 200 lives, the country has largely returned to the tranquillity it enjoyed before. This is not only the impression that any visitor to Nicaragua will receive, it is confirmed by statistics: […]
The slow death of investigative journalism
The title of Seymour Hersh’s memoir is simply Reporter. It’s what he did and what he does: dig out and report important facts that need to be seen in the daylight, no matter how much the CIA, a US vice-president or secretary of state, or a mafia boss, may want to keep them hidden. Hersh, […]
‘Human rights’ propaganda against Nicaragua comes from Costa Rica
Some of the local ‘human rights’ organisations in Nicaragua, which received foreign funding and operated as propaganda vehicles against the government, lost their legal status earlier this year. One of the these was CENIDH, run by Vilma Nuñez. Several of the staff, including a director, Gonzalo Carrión, left in February to set up a new […]
Counting deaths for dollars: the rise and fall of Nicaragua’s ‘human rights’ organizations
In their hunger for US funding, Nicaraguan “human rights” NGO’s inflated the death toll during last year’s coup. Today, these groups are in a state of complete disarray.
Live from Nicaragua
This week is the launch of the Spanish edition of the ebook about last year’s events in Nicaragua. The launch coincides with the 40th anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship on 19 July 1979. Here is a review of the book by Roger Stoll. The English version of Live from Nicaragua is offered […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on